Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is seven. They are strangers to her. When she is born her parents hand her over to a childless peasant couple in the mountains. Aged two, and suffering from malnutrition on a diet of yam leaves, they leave Xiaolu with her illiterate grandparents in a fishing village on the East China Sea.
From the Orange-shortlisted and Granta Best Young British Novelist, comes a rich memoir of growing up in modern China. Offers an intimate history of this fascinating country over the last four decades, together with an insight into daily life during the 1970s and '80s, covering politics, poverty and censorship.
